Historians are beginning to believe that the advent of underwear helped bring about a boost in literacy in medieval England. Basically, the peasants who went commando began wearing undergarments, which made for a higher supply of rags, which then got turned into, well, fairly-affordable paper!

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The International Medieval Congress heard yesterday that the rural habit of wearing nothing under a rough smock or leggings was frowned on as peasants developed into tradesmen and found themselves running shops with customers of the opposite sex. "As underwear became more popular, so the supply of rags increased significantly," Marco Mostert of Utrecht University told the conference in Leeds. "That in turn increased the amount of paper and brought knowledge within reach of a much wider audience.